At my home studio, I built up the track live and recorded it onto hard disc. I have so far only ever used one sequencer: Voyetra's old Sequencer Plus Gold. (SPG) I was first exposed to it by Fred in 1987, when we were working on our first album. What I love about it is that it's a DOS program, and it runs in text mode, so it runs beautifully on a 286 PC. I have an old 286 box that serves as my sequencer and nothing else. Despite the fact that it runs in text mode, it is one of the BEST graphical representations of music I have ever seen. Best of all, it's NOT WINDOWS! YAY! Until recently, I had no reason to start using a GUI sequencer, but recent developments have convinced me that it is finally time to make the switch. Most notably, is the rise of direct-to-disc audio being merged with the sequencer. When I upgrade my studio next year, after touring, I will probably get Logic Audio.
   For making new sounds, or sequencing albums or burning CD's or processing vocals or whatever, I use the incomparable Sound Forge 4.0, by Sonic Foundry. This is probably the all-round most satisfying piece of software I have ever acquired. (With the possible exception of Descent) For those of you who have version 3.0d, I can say that upgrading to 4.0b is worth it. They put all their effort into improving the quality of each effect, rather than trying to add as many new effects as possible. Many of the ver. 3 effects which were amusing but not usable are now perfectly professional.    Most of the sound in my songs comes out of Akai S-1000's. I know the 3000's are way cooler, but like I said, next year I'm upgrading my studio. The 1000's have served me well. I also get a lot of use out of my Roland MKS-80 analogue synth, E-Mu's Proteus, and a Roland D-110. My mixer is a Mackie, and I use a Casio VZ-1 for a controller and occasional string pad unit. For effects, I like my 2 Roland SRV-2000 reverb units, (which are fabulous classics) a BOSS (Roland) SE-50, and a Yamaha SPX-1000. (For which I paid an astounding $1800 back when I hadn't yet learned not to buy things the same week they came out.)
   I use a Panasonic SV-3500 DAT machine as a mix-down recorder, and a Yamaha CDR-400 for burning CD's.
   With sound design being as important to me as it is, I finally decided that shuffling through all my AKAI floppy discs was unreasonable, and I needed something better. I made a database for my sounds using MicroSoft Access, and the good people at Sonic Foundry were kind enough to write some new code for Sound Forge to allow it to throw sounds back and forth from the S-1000's to the computer via SCSI. I translated all my sounds to .wav's and now I store them all on my hard disc. Whenever I need a sound for a song, I just hit the "Send to Akai" button, and there it is. As of 08/11/97, I have 4405 sounds in my soundfile database. Some of these can be found on the
.Wav O' The Week (tm) site.

   At Fred's studio, we sequenced with Logic and Logic Audio running on some kind of computer that wasn't a PC, and recorded everything onto DAT and ADAT. Some sound modules of his that we used: E-Mu's Proteus 2, 2 Roland MKS-50's, 2 Roland MKS-80's, a Roland R8-M, a Roland JV-880, a Roland JD-990 Fred has some mother-huge SoundTracs Solo MIDI mixer.
   At Steve's, we sequenced with Cakewalk Pro on a PC, and recorded onto DAT and ADAT. Steve's gear that we used included a Roland JV-880, a Kurzweil K-2000 sampler, an Akai S-1100 sampler, a Roland JX-8P, and Steve's Schechter guitar-thing. (A guitar is a long piece of wood with metal strings attached. The strings are attached at both ends with adjustable fasteners that allow you to precisely set the tension. Then you pluck the strings with your fingers or a piece of plastic. A small magnetic head translates the vibrations of the string into an electrical signal which is fed to the output.) Steve's mixer is the Mackie 32x8.